Check the Category Labels in the side-bar on the right! There you can find animator drafts for sixteen complete Disney features and eighty-six shorts,as well as Action Analysis Classes and many other vintage animation documents!

Monday, November 20, 2006

Missing Pages...

Michael Sporn posted a lecture by Phil Dike on October 20th, and two pages were distroyed by the xerox machine. Here are the two pages. Read or re-read the rest from his great site!

I am currently in Orange County, CA, and I certainly prefer this weather over Denmark!

Hi, Nancy - long time! How I remember Hand Animation on Nørrebrogade in Copenhagen in 1987. Long gone now...

It is nice and warm in L.A. in relation to Denmark, and I do make some nice contacts, though I notice a kind of 'waiting pattern' where everyone wants everything for half price because they are unsure if they want CG or hand-drawn stuff. Interesting, but a bit irritating, too.

In Denmark we are doing well, and this was a year of a lot of releases. Asterix, of course, of which I have no idea how the release in the US will be, if any. With original voices by Paul Giamatti, Brad Garrett and Sean Astin, one would think it would. The fact that they are listed under 'additional cast' on IMDb is sort of a giveaway on the way the distribution is handled by the French company M6, for whom we made it, though... At large international venues they chose to screen it in French... Sigh...

Our 'Ugly Duckling and Me' has been up against tough competition, in Denmark against 'Over the Hedge', a film with a ten times higher budget, and it suffers by comparison, not storywise, but many reviewers cannot see past the fact that we could not afford fur and feathers. WE are, though, modestly happy with the film, as it has a heart and a sense of humor that isn't as adolescent as many of the other films around. It is currently in discussion for video distribution in the US.

I found that several of our films have been released on video in the US. Not something that we knew of back in Denmark, even. Our 'Help! I'm a Fish' has been re-named 'A Fish Tale', with a ghastly CG cover, probably to mask that it is hand-drawn, who knows. Our 'Jungle Jack' and 'Amazon Jack' have been renamed 'Go Hugo Go' and 'Hugo the Movie Star', and were pretty much destroyed. The opening credits cut off, ALL the sound redone into a ghastly home-synthesizer mix with over the top tv-actors, and I hear they cut stuff out, too. All in all, not a pretty sight. Our successful TV series 'The Fairytaler', based on Hans Christian Andersen stories is here called 'The Fairytales', but has otherwise been treated fairly well. In all, is was a surprise to find all these within the last six months.

As a studio, we do well. There is always lots to do, and we spread our stuff out between Denmark, and our subsidiaries in Estonia and Latvia, where we have some very competent people.

Well, Nancy, I enjoy reading your blog items - as I have enjoyed seeing your animation - and I hope you find the stuff here interesting.Keep up the good work!

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About Me

Interested in animation since 1975, worked in Holland with Danish animator Børge Ring for four years (incl. on the Oscar-winning 'Anna & Bella'), then moved to Denmark in 1984.

Co-founder and co-owner since 1988 of A. Film, Europe's foremost animation studio, in business for ca. 30 years. We are the studio behind 'The Flight before Christmas', 'Help! I'm a Fish', 'Terkel in Trouble', 'Asterix and the Vikings', 'The Ugly Duckling and Me' and many more...

Currently the President and CEO of A. Film L.A., Inc. in Los Angeles,and director of "Miffy the Movie."

Though we are very involved in new techniques, I share a deep passion for Great Classical Animation with everyone at the studio;Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston's "Illusion of Life" is our bible.